PETALING JAYA: Big changes are afoot in PKR, with a clear signal from the party’s grassroots that some leaders are not performing despite holding national-level posts.
Several leaders who are ministers and deputy ministers were shown the door in a series of upsets in the recent round of divisional elections, a reflection of the members’ unhappiness.
It could also be a sign of things to come in the top leadership, especially as many of those who were ousted were personalities seen as close to deputy president Datuk Seri Rafizi Ramli.
Some grassroots leaders, however, dismiss this view, saying that Rafizi himself and many of those seen aligned to him had also won.
“This is a normal democratic process that every PKR leader must go through. It shows that our members are not sleeping but are watching their leaders intently,” said Federal Territories PKR leader Syed Badli Shah Syed Osman.
“Our members give their leaders three years to fulfil their mandate and their responsibilities.
“If you do not perform in those three years, the members will take that mandate back,” said Syed Badli Shah, who won the Titiwangsa PKR division chief post on April 19.
PKR’s division-level elections were held from April 11 to 20.
Polls for the national party posts will be held on May 24.
Some of the big names that failed to win division chief posts over the weekend included veterans Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad in Setiawangsa and Christina Liew in Kota Kinabalu.
Active in PKR since the early 2000s, Nik Nazmi has led the party’s youth wing and is currently a vice-president. He is also the Natural Resources and Environmental Sustainability Minister.
Liew is a veteran Sabah PKR leader and a former party treasurer. She is currently Sabah Minister for Tourism, Culture and Environment.
Other prominent names that failed to secure division posts are deputy ministers Akmal Nasrullah Nasir (Energy Transition and Water Transformation) and Saraswathy Kandasami (National Unity).
Akmal failed to win the Johor Baru division chief contest while Saraswathy did not make the cut in the Bukit Bintang division.
MPs such as Zahir Hassan (Wangsa Maju), Yuneswaran Ramaraj (Segamat), Jimmy Puah (Tebrau) and Prabakaran Parameswaran (Batu) also failed to win division posts.
Zahir was defeated in the Wangsa Maju division contest, Prabakaran lost his bid in Batu, while Yuneswaran and Puah failed to make it in the Tebrau polls.
Political scientist Assoc Prof Dr Mazlan Ali sees the defeats as the waning influence of the Rafizi camp as many of the losers were linked to the Economy Minister.
“Some of these leaders were probably active at the grassroots level before Pakatan Harapan came back into power after the 15th General Election in 2022,” said Mazlan, a lecturer at University Teknologi Malaysia.
“But when they won parliamentary seats and were elevated to national-level positions, some of them went quiet and slowed down.”
Pasir Gudang MP Hassan Karim was even more blunt, describing the polls as a process where the members are purging the party of elitist politicians.
“Some party icons, who hold minister and deputy minister posts and who have become elites in the corridors of power have suddenly become hard to contact and are no longer close to the members who worked for them,” Hassan wrote in a Facebook post.
“These people no longer reply WhatsApp messages from their members and even left WhatsApp groups of people who supported them.”
